Androids and Robots as player characters...(4/e of course)

[whswhs]

What do you mean by "android"? In the SF that I read in the fifties and sixties, a robot was a nonliving mechanical being with human intelligence (or close to it), but an android was an artificial living being made from chemicals (like Rossum's universal robots, but never mind). An android could be just like a human being in every way, except that they had no parents and might be sterile/sexless. But since George Lucas messed up the language, "droid" has been a near synonym of "robot." Which are we talking about?

[Flyndaran]

I think point budget is important for robots. If you're keeping it under 200 or so, you'll have to really scrimp on the abilities and push hard for limitations.

[Qoltar]

Originally Posted by whswhs

What do you mean by "android"? In the SF that I read in the fifties and sixties, a robot was a nonliving mechanical being with human intelligence (or close to it), but an android was an artificial living being made from chemicals......

I meant 'android' as in the popular common or current usage of the term to mean Human-appearing 'robots' or machine life that can sometimes pass for Human on a cursory examination or when standing near a group of humans.

Examples: Bishop in the movie "Aliens", Commander Data in "Star Trek The Next Generation", 'Gigolo Joe' from the movie "AI", police officer Dorian in the near future TV show "Almost Human", Ava and her sisters in the 2014 movie "Ex Machina", the Hosts on the TV show "Westworld", ....etc....

Thats what I meant by Android.

- Ed C.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by whswhs

What do you mean by "android"? In the SF that I read in the fifties and sixties, a robot was a nonliving mechanical being with human intelligence (or close to it), but an android was an artificial living being made from chemicals (like Rossum's universal robots, but never mind). An android could be just like a human being in every way, except that they had no parents and might be sterile/sexless. But since George Lucas messed up the language, "droid" has been a near synonym of "robot." Which are we talking about?

Could you get a non-sentient PC? That would be appropriate for any kind of tool and not just a robot. Even abstract concepts like nations are in a sense tools and can be played as PCs.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Qoltar

I meant 'android' as in the popular common or current usage of the term to mean Human-appearing 'robots' or machine life that can sometimes pass for Human on a cursory examination or when standing near a group of humans.

I thought that was what you might mean, but I wanted to be sure. That usage always sounds foreign to me, because from when I first read comic books and science fiction until around 1980, it wasn't ever used that way. Androids were always synthetic lifeforms (really, the ones that looked female should have been called "gynecoids," but never mind). But if you want robots in humanoid shells, let me give it some thought.